The Pharaoh Comes Closer to Falling

by Pejman Yousefzadeh on February 1, 2011

Mubarak won’t run for President again–or so he claims. Even if this is true, it will do nothing to pacify the protesters. He may have sworn to die on Egyptian soil, but if his promise holds, that most likely means a violent death in the short term at the hands of angry Egyptians. Either that, or Mubarak will actually die in a hotel in Saudi Arabia . . . assuming, of course, that the Saudi monarchy does not get engulfed in protests.

Incidentally, you know a leader is in trouble when the people start mocking him:

In scale and message, the protests in Egypt were a remarkable expression of unity in a country that once represented the Arab world’s nexus but stagnated under Mr. Mubarak’s withering authoritarianism. Peasants from southern Egypt joined Islamists from the Nile Delta and businessmen from upper-class suburbs rubbed shoulders with street-smart youths from gritty Bulaq in a square that served as a vast tapestry of a country’s diversity joined in a blunt message: Mr. Mubarak must surrender power.